Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

We just celebrated our one year #WITHpod anniversary! What!? To mark the occasion, we put together a second mailbag episode with producer Tiffany Champion to answer your questions and reflect on the year. Find out who Chris said was his favorite guest, why he loves #WITHpod listeners so much, and what he hopes to do in our second year. Thanks for listening! EPISODES MENTIONED: School Segregation i...

An era of paranoia, the pull of radical politics, the way in which an entire society can fall under the sway of a fever, and how that fever eventually breaks. These themes made up one of the darkest periods of modern American History: The era of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. This week historian and journalist David Maraniss discusses his new book “A Good American Family”, that excavates the story...

On the final day of Passover this year, a gunman walked into a synagogue outside of San Diego, killing one and injuring three more. Exactly six months earlier, a man entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, shouted anti-Semitic slurs and opened fire, killing 11 of those gathered. These acts of violence are part of a marked rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes unfolding across the nation in re...

Should you be worried about the federal deficit? While campaigning, President Trump followed in the footsteps of his conservative predecessors by fear-mongering about the ballooning deficit but when he got to the White House that concern seemed to disappear when it came to his tax cuts for the rich and increased government spending. In fact, there’s a pattern to the Republicans’ selective concern...

What is the most devastating impact Donald Trump has had on the highest office? His lies and rhetoric and bigotry have all had a poisonous effect on our national discourse. But when it comes to his destruction of norms, those are only the ones most visible to the public. What about the destruction of norms going on behind the scenes, disrupting the most critical work necessary for running the fede...

Did you know there are roughly one million people currently held in internment camps in China? One million people detained against their will, facing no criminal charges, cut off from the outside world. This is the story of the Uyghurs, a small insulated ethnic minority in Western China. The predominantly Muslim group has faced growing levels of Islamophobia and paranoia from the Chinese governmen...

If you trace the prescription opioid epidemic that is gripping the country to its source, you will find yourself at the feet of the Sackler family. Patrick Radden Keefe is back in a special bonus episode to discuss the newest revelations about the origins of America's OxyContin addiction and the lengths the Sackler’s went to build their empire of pain. RELATED READING: The Family That Built an Emp...

No war can last forever, and when peace comes, those who lived through the horror of violence and hatred have to find a way to live with each other. So it is in Northern Ireland, where since 1998 Catholics and Unionists have lived side by side in a tenuous peace despite the three decades of bloodshed, violence and oppression that tore it apart from 1968 to 1998. But just because peace arrives does...

What if we just got rid of prisons? The United States is the epicenter of mass incarceration – but exactly what is it we hope to get out of putting people in prisons? And whatever your answer is to that – is it working? It’s worthwhile to stop and interrogate our intentions about incarceration and whether it enacts justice or instead satisfies some urge to punish. Prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba...

Is democracy doomed? Actually, let’s take one step back: what came to your mind when you read the word ‘democracy’? It’s one of those words that on first glance seems easy enough to define but can trip you up as you get deeper in parsing it. Luckily, filmmaker Astra Taylor has a new documentary out conveniently titled “What is Democracy?” It’s a movie that traffics less in trying to answer the tit...

Life expectancy in America has gone down three years in a row. You might expect to see a decline in average life expectancy in the aftermath of war or famine – to witness it in an industrialized nation in the middle of an otherwise prosperous era, however, is unprecedented. It is a distress signal that something has gone horribly wrong. Jonathan Metzl traced that distress signal to its origin and...

There are a whole lot of people running for President. Already, the candidates are beginning their nationwide trek, pitching themselves to the Democratic base. Each campaign faces the same struggle: how to craft a message that appeals to a coalition made up of people from all different backgrounds and walks of life. This candidate primary of town halls and stump speeches and campaign stops is craf...

There’s a reason we keep revisiting identity on WITHpod. From Brittney Cooper to Alex Wagner to Michael Tesler to Amy Chua and on, it’s a topic worth circling back to because it’s one of the most fundamental axes of conflict in our society today. Identities themselves are as old as we as a species are, but the concept of identity is relatively recent. Our ideas of identities are shifting and chang...

Is it too late for us? Scientists have spent decades sounding the alarm on the devastating effects of climate change. And for decades, society decided to do pretty much nothing about it. In fact, over the past 30 years, we’ve done more damage to the climate than in all of human history! Now, there’s a real chance we may have waited too long to avoid widespread tragedy and suffering. In his book “T...

It’s our second live edition of WITHpod, featuring special guest Stacey Abrams! Just a heads up, this is one of those episodes that'll make you laugh out loud in public. A lot. If you want to get to the heart of the most fundamental question facing the Democratic Party right now – what is the future of the coalition – look no further than Stacey Abrams. Her historic 2018 campaign for Georgia Gover...

How soon after waking up do you check your phone? Do you compulsively refresh your Twitter feed? Can you find your way around without Google Maps? There are many obvious and tactile ways in which Silicon Valley has its hooks in our everyday lives. And as we see Big Tech face increased scrutiny, people are becoming more conscious of their interactions with technology: limiting screen time, quitting...

**Listen for details on how to win tickets to our live WITHpod recording with Stacey Abrams!** Why is it so hard to raise taxes on the rich? From freshmen firebrands to Presidential hopefuls, taxing the wealthy has become the Congressional conversation du jour of 2019 that has no signs of slowing down. But before even getting into the policy debates and the ideological disputes, there’s one import...

Why do we summarize things into ‘tweet length versions’? It requires the flattening of nuance and personality and information that we need to talk about complicated things. Whether it’s the 280 characters of a tweet or a clickbait headline, we’re trafficking in hollowed out means of communicating that lack space for depth and complexity. While society is in a crucial moment of trying to figure out...

Presale tickets available TODAY starting at 10a ET >>> Buy tickets here < < < < To access presale tickets, use special code -- WITHPOD Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collect...

*We have a new live show on the calendar! Listen for details.* If you care about battling climate change, then you might want to pay attention to the New York City subway system. We know there’s an urgent need to cut our carbon emissions and a big part of that is going to be transportation. We need to radically reimagine the way we get around in the coming years because we cannot continue to have...

We have a Census update! When last we left you, Dale Ho was headed to court to argue against the Trump administration’s plan to add a citizenship question on the 2020 census. Now, Dale Ho is back to tell us what the court decided and what happens next. If you haven’t listened to the original episode, make sure to check that out first! The Trump Scheme to Rig the Census with Dale Ho (released Novem...

What does Amazon want from us? For consumers, Amazon can be a frictionless gateway to find everything from bed frames to dog food, baby clothes to award winning original tv series. There’s nothing quite like it – a position they’re in not by accident but by design. Amazon became the behemoth we know it to be by targeting and absorbing any competition, leveraging favorable government treatment, and...

What was so bad about NAFTA? If you ask the President, it was one of the worst deals ever made. A common 2016 campaign riff was him promising to bring jobs back, get companies to return production to the U.S., and scrap NAFTA. This anti-trade campaigning caught the attention of many voters struggling to find work. Interestingly, it also got the attention of progressive trade critics on the left wh...

How can Democrats win in deep red America? During the midterms, momentum behind progressive candidates in red states garnered national attention – Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Andrew Gillum in Florida, and Stacey Abrams in Georgia. These were no overnight successes. They were the culmination of, among many things, the tireless efforts of grass roots organizers. Organizers like George Goehl, Director of...

You asked, Chris answered! In our inaugural mailbag episode, we talk about the organizing power of county fairs, why members of Congress contradict each other on Yemen, whether there’s any hope for the Internet, and more. Can you guess which WITHpod revelation Chris thinks is the most shocking yet? Also, the first ever appearance of WITHpod producer Tiffany Champion. EPISODES WE TALKED ABOUT Who B...